Monday, February 11, 2013

The Walking Dead: The Suicide King Review

Ladies and gentlemen, where the true horrors of war happen: the home-er... prison-front.

Spoilers follow

Alright, last night TWD came back from a three month hiatus with a vengeance. I've been missing this show so much since episode 7's cliffhanger, which is exactly where the episode picks up. Daryl and Merle are cornered by the Governor, who wants them to fight to the death, which starts to happen until our heroes arrive and bail them out in a sweet but disappointingly short second raid. They start going back to the prison whilst Woodbury is in chaos. And now for the aftermath.

Long story short, Rick-and Glenn- refuse to take Merle back to the prison, so Daryl goes on the road with him. I had mixed feelings about that because I didn't want him to leave the group, but I know that him abandoning his brother to survive on his own would've felt wicked contrived. And judging by the promos for the next episode, the fact that Norman Reedus is still in the opening credits, and the fact that Michael Rooker isn't anymore... well, take a guess. Hey, I could be wrong, but I could also be right. Here's hoping Daryl does it.

Back at the prison everyone is reeling from what just happened: Glenn is pissed (I'm done) and probably is gonna do something stupid but awesome, he and Maggie are barely talking, and Rick is... we'll get to that later. Carol sure come a long way, judging by her conversation with Beth (who, in spite of my initial groans, the writers have actually found a decent amount to do for), which is good, given the show's track record with female characters. And I just like to point out that they actually mentioned Oscar is dead. Nobody actually seemed to care to much save for Axl, but hey, at least they didn't never bring him up again. Granted, he'll never get brought up again from this point on, but still.

And now onto the new token black character. We'll hopefully not so much on the token part, as he seems like a solid character thus far. Yeah, Tyronne is basically Rick except still sane (again, more on that later). In other words, what Rick was in season 2. He's even sort of got a Shane. Basically, he comes off as a reasonable guy, and as much as I want Rick to accept him and let him and his group integrate, I know he's not gonna. I still like where things are going with Tyronne and his group though, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Michonne said literally nothing the whole episode. If you're one of many who don't like her, you may've been pleased by that. I, on the other hand, was kinda curious to see where the character goes after her little emotional breakdown in the last episode. But nothing. Andrea on the other hand... dear God, Andrea is an idiot. See, as usual, the prison scenes were better then the Woodbury scenes. The Governor's apparent sanity slippage was cool, and I want to see more of the that, but the rest of the town... their actions were reasonable, I guess, but it was honestly ridiculous that Andrea's corny speech was enough calm everyone down.

Back at the prison we have Rick, who's not only hallucinating Lori's voice, but now her body (in a white dress, no less). Disturbing? Yes. Wicked cool? Hell yes. His break down at the end of the episode, fueled some great acting, was fantastic, and I REALLY wanna see where this goes, especially because I thought that not enough attention was paid to his insanity scenes in the first half of the season.

1 comment:

I’ve always felt Daryl to be an underrated character in this series. He’s a lot more important to the group than the previous episodes have shown and he finally gets recognized for his efforts in this episode—talk about not realizing how important something is until it’s gone. Daryl stands by his “code” and doesn’t ditch his bro behind like everyone thought he should.

To be honest, I don’t think Rick tried hard enough to get Daryl to stay but back at the camp, the group realizes just what an important strong player they’ve lost. Carol just couldn’t find enough ways to articulate it.